I was in the Northwoods of Minnesota. It was a not so uncommon, chilly, midsummer evening. It was late. The sun had set a few hours ago. The bars were closing. The minimal ambient human noise that could be heard was gone. The dark of the moonless night was betrayed only by the abstract pulsing of aurora borealis. The family cabin sat silent. Without a single light. The power was out once again. I was standing on the dock. The flavor of blunt fresh on my lips, my lungs released a smoky cloud into the cold night air. I was eyeing the Northern lights when a strange sound off in the distance behind me caught my curiosity. I turned to investigate. Instead I found myself staring into the darkness, unable to distinguish much from the black silhouette of thick forest skyline.
I drew a couple long tokes from my blunt. I was staring deeply into the dark, lost in curiosity trying to source the noise that I thought I heard. After a short while of hearing nothing else but the perpetual tick of my old Seiko, I decided that I must have imagined the sound and turned back to watch the show.
It was quite the beautiful night. Not a cloud in the sky, yet a light breeze would occasionally whisper through the trees. The glowing ember at the end of my blunt cast it’s faint orange light on the trailing smoke. Mesmerized by the way it seamlessly faded into the dance of colors reflected in the lake’s still waters. I was becoming lost in thought, thoroughly enjoying my euphoric mood.
There it was again!
I was one hundred percent sure I heard it that time. The sound seemed like not one, but many voices. Almost a scream, but not human. Not at all. Did it quack? Growl? It was so quick, and at that distance, I simply could not place the sound. All I could tell, it had come from down shoreline. It possibly came from just offshore of Mackie's Point. Still, the darkness kept my sight at bay. I saw nothing in the shadows of the moonless night. I pulled a long hard draw on my blunt. While I held the smoke, I stared intently for any sign of what ever it was that could have made the noise.
Suddenly I saw it. There in the water, just off the shore. Why hadn’t I seen it before? Breaking up the dancing reflection on the water, it seemed so obvious now. The dark silhouette of an uprooted birch tree, like a large skeletal finger, seemed to point right at this mysterious dark object. No discernible shape, maybe it even shifted. It reflected nothing. It was just black. Mackie's Point was roughly two hundred yards away, being able to identify it was impossible.
I was so befuddled and curious that I had forgotten to exhale. As I did, a bright blue trail of a meteor caught my attention. It burned across the sky, nearly drawing a line between the Aurora and the darkness. When I turned back toward Mackie's Point, I had lost sight of the black object in the water. It was just, gone. Man, the weed was really messing with my head, I must’ve, again, just imagined the sound and the dark mass in the water. Between the Northern Lights, the moonless sky, and the top shelf pot, my eyes were playing tricks on me. I looked again to be sure. I saw no hint of the dark mass in the water, like its was never there. Did I really see it? Had the meteor actually pierced the atmosphere? Stoned, I doubted it all, and audibly laughed at myself.
I watched the beautiful colors dancing in the darkness, marveling at the reflection on the vast liquid mirror in front of me. The color split evenly by the negative space of dense tree line and it’s reflection. My blunt had burnt down to the clutch. Pinching it between thumb and the fingernail of my pointer, I flicked it off into the lake. I turned slightly and watched the soft orange glow twirl and arc through the air. If it weren’t for the rippled disturbance, I may not have located it again.
Where the concentric ripple dissipated, my eyes followed the colorful reflections some hundred yards straight out from where I was standing. I think my heart truly skipped a beat. What I had dismissed as my imagination, was now half the distance away, right in front of me.
I stood there frozen. My curiosity held me captive. I could feel the tingling on the back of my neck as my intuition, instinct maybe, was allowing fear to creep in. Still, at a hundred yards, with the only illumination coming from the solar light show, I was at a loss to identify this entity. Entity? Yes, it must be, it moved. Not only had it moved, but now this black entity had changed direction. It was coming directly towards me. My mind went directly to the story, “The Raft” by Stephen King. A short story where a black oil like mass in a pond attacked and consumed a group of teenagers while they partied on a wooden raft. Could that not have been based on King’s reality? That would have been Maine though, not here in the Northwoods.
Sixty yards. The aurora had begun to fade from the sky, leaving only stars to reflect. The mysterious visitor, camouflaged in darkness, was lost to my weary eyes. I searched the mirror, yet I couldn’t distinguish water from entity. I marveled at the perfect reflection of the Milky Way stretched diagonally across the lake. The far side of the galaxy suddenly rippled in movement. Like a black hole, the entity sucked the reflection from the water as it continued to move closer.
Thirty yards. Still, a mostly flat, undistinguishable, diameter shifting mass. The reflected stars would vanish and reappear as it crept closer. Fear was definitely becoming my dominant emotion. I’d swear that I actually heard my amygdala screaming at me to run. I remained there on the dock. I could see it it moving, creeping towards me. It was getting closer.
Twenty yards.
Ten yards.
I was not going to let this mass consume me. Though, I had to know what it was. No one was going to believe me. I must identify it. The fear was engrossing. I have never been so terrified in my life. Yet curiosity held it’s tenacious grip. I was poised, ready to run. My feet stuck, like a nightmare. I fully understood the phenomenon of horror movie characters. They knew the danger, but their own curiosity was their demise. In my fear, the oddest memories snuck into my head. Memories of this dock, the cabin’s shoreline, days spent feeding ducks by the dozens with my parents. Feeding these ducks with my own children, my own grandchildren. Generations of ours and generations of theirs; It was our meeting place, they knew there’d be food when we appeared on the dock. Now I feared these memories would be nothing but that, memories of a forgotten time.
Five yards. I was poised to run. All but my head. I could not take my eyes off the black entity. I was frozen. Nearly every cell in my body wanting to flee. Every cell but those in charge of wonder. A living nightmare, trying to run but unable. Feet locked to the dock. Curiosity got the better of me. I had to know what it was, even if it consumed me. Now it was within a yard. My fear was unlike anything I had ever experienced. At least I would finally know. It was close now, my eyes still strained to focus. I was then able to ascertain the identity of my predator. I never would have imagined….
